About Optics & Photonics TopicsOSA Publishing developed the Optics and Photonics Topics to help organize its diverse content more accurately by topic area. This topic browser contains over 2400 terms and is organized in a three-level hierarchy. Read more.

Topics can be refined further in the search results. The Topic facet will reveal the high-level topics associated with the articles returned in the search results.

Abstract

This paper proposes one broadly tunable terahertz (THz) slow-light system in a semiconductor-insulator-semiconductor structure. Subject to an external magnetic field, the structure supports in total two surface magneto plasmons (SMPs) bands above and below the surface plasma frequency, respectively. Both the SMPs bands can be tuned by the external magnetic field. Numerical studies show that leveraging on the two tunable bands, the frequency and the group velocity of the slowed-down THz wave can be widely tuned from 0.3 THz to 10 THz and from 1 c to 10−6c, respectively, when the external magnetic field increases up to 6 Tesla. The proposed method based on the two SMPs bands can be widely used for many other plasmonic devices.

Figures (4)

(a) Schematic structure of the THz plasmonic slow-light system. The magnetic field B is applied perpendicularly to the propagating direction of the THz wave in a Voigt configuration. (b) Dispersion relation of the SMPs modes in the structure in THz frequencies under magnetic fields with different magnitudes.

(a) Bulk Voigt permittivity εV as a function of the incident frequency without an external magnetic field (black dashed line) and with a 0.5 Tesla magnetic field (blue lines) applied. (b) and (c) Normalized Ex intensities of the SMPs mode along the x-axis under an external magnetic field of 1 Tesla for the incident frequencies at 1 THz and 3 THz, which are in the lower and higher bands, respectively.

Slow-light effect of the proposed structure under an external magnetic field. (a) Normalized group velocity of the structure with 0 to 2 Tesla external magnetic fields (lines: numerical results by fitting dispersion curves in Fig. 1; Triangular points: FDTD simulation results). (b) Incident frequencies versus their corresponding magnetic field intensities required. The lower and the higher bands under the magnetic field are indicated by the blue and the pink shadows, respectively.